Thanks to the F1PitRadio Twitter guy, I noticed this piece of team radio with Nico Hülkenberg after the Malaysia Grand Prix. Despite finishing 8th and scoring his and the team’s first points of the year, he had some very stern words for his engineer…

Aside from him pointing out that there’s a lot of room for improvement with the car, Nico clearly refers to some sort of issue with the radio; “I don’t have to explain about the radio, I think. That is unacceptable. Unbelievable.”

What could’ve happened with the radio that upset Nico so much, do we think?

“I feel quite well rewarded going home with four points after my first race of the season in a new team and with a new car. I am quite happy with how it went, especially at the start of the race when we were quite quick on the intermediates. But then I was stuck in traffic and couldn’t find my way past other drivers. I think eighth was well deserved, considering I had to fight and push a lot today. I think the potential is there, and now we have to work on a few details.”

He definitely said “I don’t have to explain about the radio”, but maybe he meant ‘over the radio’. But no idea what he is referring to.

But in all seriousness, I find this very intriguing. Despite his name, Hulk comes across as a very measured and calm guy*, so it mustn’t have been good whatever it was. I can only postulate that the team either weren’t giving him enough/relevant info or were doing so at inappropriate times, but they don’t really seem like major enough issues.

Interesting enough, from what I take out of this article, he was just utterly unimpressed by how the car manages its tyres over the race distance and wants his team to improve fast:

Blick quotes the 25-year-old as adding: “When I go at the speed of Ferrari, Lotus and McLaren, I quickly ruin the tyres. Now we have a lot of data and impressions and I hope we can draw the right conclusions.”